From publisher Frank Schaffer and Singapore Asian Publications comes a series of books: Singapore Math: 70 Must-Know Word Problems. From the back cover:
This book is designed to help students master word problems, which are often tricky and challenging…This book is perfect for students familiar with Singapore Math and for those who just need extra practice with word problems.
The 70 Must-Know Word Problems books are marked by levels that are considered a grade above for the U.S. market. For example, the Level 6 book claims to be appropriate for students in grade 7 and the Level 4 book is listed as appropriate for students in grade 5. If your child has been learning with Primary Mathematics and you’d like to pick up one of these workbooks, you should probably pick up the level that correlates to their current grade. Meaning, if your child is currently working their way through the Level 4 Primary Mathematics textbook, then the level 4 70 Must-Know Word Problems book will work as a supplement. The problems in the books are extra practice type problems, designed to give students similar to the ones in the Primary Mathematics textbooks. If you student is look for something harder, you might want to consider the Challenging Word Problems for Primary Mathematics series.
The 70 Must-Know series does not follow the Primary Mathematics lesson progression, the questions jump between concepts. Questions #3 and #47 in the Level 6 book, for example, are both on Volume. Question #2 & 5 cover the four operations with money and Question #4 is on percentages, so you may need to verify that a topic has been covered in class if your planning on using the book at home. The books have little instruction, however they do include a four page Introduction to Singapore Math (be forewarned, it’s written in six-point font!). Each problem has its own full page for work and there are fully worked solutions included in the answer key.
Here’s Question #70 from the Level 4 book. It’s listed in the table of contents under “Addition, Subtraction, Multiplication and Division of Whole Numbers”.
At a movie, 1/4 of the people in the theater were men, 5/8 were women and the rest were children. If there were 100 more women than children, what was the total number of people in the theater?
And Question # 48 from Level 6:
A box contained some red, blue, and green markers. For every 5 red markers, there were 2 blue markers. For every 3 blue markers, there were 5 green markers.
(a) Find the ratio of red markers to blue markers to green markers.
(b) When 6 red markers were removed from the box, 3/7 of the remaining markers were red markers. How many markers were left in the box?
Singapore Math: 70 Must-Know Word Problems was $12.99 at my local Barnes and Noble and Borders stores. The easy accessibility of these books make them great for parents looking for additional problems for their students. Teachers looking to use these materials in class need to keep on mind that these books may already be in their students’ homes!
About Cassy Turner
I’ve been using the “Challenging Word Problems” series in my homeschool and took a look at these new books at my local B&N. I was very disappointed in how “dumbed down” they seemed compared to the CWP books.
These definitely won’t replace the Challenging Word Problems series. They are truly designed for simple additional practice.
Have you seen the new CWP materials at Singaporemath.com yet? They only have levels 1-3, but 4-6 should be available later in the year. The newer versions of CWP should align with both the U.S and Standards Editions of Primary Mathematics.
Hi Cassy,
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Hope this is helpful,
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